HISTORY
OF THE 305th FIELD ARTILLERY
by
Charles Wadsworth Camp
1919
History of the
305th Field Artillery
THE REGIMENT IS BORN
WHEN it comes to beginnings, regiments are not unlike
humans. They aren't pretty objects, or self-sufficient.
They gaze upon the world with inquiring eyes. They
address it with lusty and surprised lungs.
We were very much like that, and our first surprises came
with our first days, when the men commissioned from the
second battery at the first Plattsburg Reserve Officers'
Training Camp reported at Camp Upton.
The adjutant's office was in an unpainted wooden
barracks. A line stretched hour after hour, snake-like,
half around it, its head investigating the somber
corridor where the adjutant's assistant sat making
assignments. Nearby, those who had survived the ordeal
stood in groups, ill-at -ease, wondering.
"What is a casual officer? Something to do with
casualties?"
"They told me at Plattsburg," you might hear
another say, "I was in the regimental quota. That
fellow in there says no. I'm in a thing called Military
Police, and when I told him I'd never swung a billy in my
life he wanted to know what that had to do with it."
"I'm in the Depot Brigade," a third grinned
sheepishly. "Good God! Do we have to run the
trains?"
A captain walked from the corridor and came up with a
pleased smile.
"What did they hand you?" someone asked.
In his voice was pride, and a vague, new responsibility.
"I'm assigned to the 305th Field Artillery, National
Army."
Several joined as in a chorus:
"So are we. That's going to be the number of our
regiment."
And the surprise and gloom deepened on the faces of those
shifted thus unexpectedly to unforeseen branches of the
service.
After that fashion the regiment was born and baptized,
and we heard for the first time the significant number in
which officers and men have, to an extent, merged their
thoughts, their actions, and their individualities.
Colonel Fred Charles Doyle was the first to report. He
came from the regular army, and received his assignment
from Major-General Bell on August 28th, 1917. For ten
days afterward the officers poured in and commenced to
prepare for the men who would arrive in the course of the
next few weeks.
Without the men, during those days of its beginnings, it
wasn't, to be sure, much of a regiment, yet it possessed
from the start ambition, pride Of organization, and
already-a noticeable factor-an instinct that ours was to
be bigger, better, and more terrible to the enemy than
any other regiment of Field Artillery.
Yet we went gropingly at first, asking earnest but absurd
questions about equipment and rations, or demanding with
concern where we could house even a single section. For
the welcome Camp Upton gave us was not of arms
outstretched and smiling hospitality. We had stepped from
New York through a screen of dreary pine wilderness to a
habitation, startling and impossible. A division was to
be trained here to fight the Hun, but to any observing
person it appeared that if the war should last another
decade Camp Upton could not become useful. It wore an air
of having just been begun and of never wishing to be
finished. A few white pine barracks stretched gaunt
frames from the mud against a mournful sky. Towards the
railroad two huge tents had an appearance of captive
balloons, half-inflated. For the rest there were heaps of
lumber of odd shapes and sizes, and countless acres of
mud, blackened by recent fires-half-cleared land across
which was scattered a multitude of grotesque and tattered
figures. These workmen went about their tasks with slow,
indifferent gestures, their attitudes suggestive of a
supreme faith in the eternity of their jobs.
Some of us gathered on Division Hill the night of our
arrival. We gazed from the little that was done to the
immensity that remained untouched.
"Where are they going to put the 305th
Captain Devereux had gathered some information. He
pointed to the northwest.
"That's the area assigned to the regiment. We'll
live and train there."
For a long time, with skeptical eyes, we continued to
stare at that blackened desert. We strolled back to J22,
our temporary quarters, depressed and doubtful. In the
barn-like upper floor, where we had erected As, we
gathered about a candle lantern, and in low tones probed
the doubtful future. Colonel Doyle, who was to be the
regiment's commander from its birth to its final
demobilization, was to us that night no more than a name.
He lived somewhere on Long Island and would be in camp
the next day. At least we had a colonel, but who would be
our lieutenant colonel? We had one major, made at
Plattsburg. What about the other we needed?
Lieutenant Derby pronounced the first of the regiment's
innumerable rumors. It should be said, too, that it's
about the only one that ever came true. He had heard in
town that Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War would
come to us as lieutenant colonel.
We gossiped about the unexpected shifting about of our
friends. Many that we had expected to have with us had
been quietly spirited away. Others, whom we had not hoped
to see after Plattsburg, sat in our circle, assigned to
the regiment. We had, at the start, found the army full
of odd surprises. It gave us all, for the moment, a sense
of instability. Our commissioned tables of organization,
filled out painstakingly the last night at Plattsburg,
would have radically to be revised. Nor was that the only
unexpected task. We couldn't forget the black waste, seen
from Division Hill. Before many days the men of the first
draft would stream in. We would have to share in the
miracles that would feed, clothe, and house them; that
would give them that vital initial impression they were
going to be taken care of in the army. Our doubts
increased when we sought our own washing facilities that
first night. Who will forget the scouting among piles of
lumber, the stumbling over roots and stumps, the escapes
from superbly imitated swamps, or the final, triumphant
discovery of a single pipe and faucet, surrounded by a
mob of violent temper? For more than a thousand officers
had reported at that time, and of the twenty-five
thousand workmen of the Thompson-Starret Company, some
undoubtedly craved that which is next to Godliness. Even
then there may have been other pipes at Upton, but for a
time that one remained our only discovery; and it had a
miserable habit of falling languidly over into the mud
unless it was supported by a comrade who had the strength
and the will to fight off an army.
Yet we shaved. Yet we contrived to look clean.
"Horrors of war, No. 1, " we labelled our pipe.
So we struggled on, preparing ourselves as best we could
for the day when the first enlisted men would arrive. We
gazed at night with new interest at the multitude of
fires that blazed, crimson, against the forest,
surrounded by ragged groups of workmen, who sat for the
most part in a sullen and unnatural quiet. For the
miracles happened under our eyes. Day by day the
wilderness receded, the mushroom city spread. This
morning you might walk in a thicket. Tomorrow you would
find it cleared land, untidy with the beginnings of
buildings. A faith grew that the 305th would have a home.
Side by side with these, other and more intimate
miracles developed. Colonel Doyle established a
regimental headquarters on a mess table in the mess hall
of J1. Whatever stateliness it may have acquired later,
headquarters went in those days, as one might say, on
hands and knees. Colonel Doyle explained how things
should be done, and we did our best to do them right.
Already from the pots and pans of J1 Paper Work raised an
evil head and sneered at us.
Before we'd got the table really untidy with baskets and typewriters and
files and reports, other organizations came enviously in, and
established headquarters on that table too. There was a machine gun
battalion, the ammunition train, and maybe a bakery company or so.
Things became rather too confused for an accurate count.
We stole quietly to J20, to the upper floor of which we
had already moved our sleeping quarters.
That same afternoon Major Wanvig appeared, bearing under
each arm an oblong board sign. One he nailed at the
entrance of the building. The other he fastened to a post
by the road, so that no one passing could deny the
presence he approached.
Each of these signs bore on a white background in
striking black strokes:
"Headquarters, 305th F. A. N. A."
We stood about staring.
"That's us-the 305th Field Artillery. Are we going
to make it big and successful enough?"
There were at least no visible shirkers, and we had
acquired already a belligerent disposition to stand fast
for the rights of the regiment. That was as it should
have been, since we were destined to be among the first
of the combat organizations. There was, moreover, need of
such a spirit.
Take J20, for example. Once you had got a bit of floor
space there the whole world conspired to tear it from
you, or, as more convenient, you from it. Regimental
Headquarters had established itself modestly in a corner
of the lower dormitory. Officers of high rank sought
sleeping space, complaining that we were in their way.
Brigade Headquarters sent messengers to measure us broad
and long. Commanding officers and adjutants of various
organizations, quartered in the same building cast in our
direction threatening glances. Low-browed hirelings of
the Thompson-Starret Company came, demanding the return
of panels of Upson board and pieces of deformed lumber
with which we had endeavored to barricade ourselves
against an eager and conscienceless world. In spite of
everything Regimental Headquarters clung to its corner
until, in late October, it moved to its own building in
the 305th area. Those few weeks in J20, moreover,
witnessed our adolescence. When we tramped across the
hill we were, indeed, a regiment.
September 6 was a day that must be recorded noticeably.
It saw the first enlisted personnel of the 305th. His
name was Frank Dunbaugh. He stood at attention before
Colonel Doyle, saluting.
"Private Dunbaugh reports as directed."
And behold we were a regiment--officers and man!
We all, I think, felt a call to take out that pleasant
young fellow and give him dismounted drill, simulated
standing gun drill, physical exercise, semaphore,
wig-wag, and buzzer; the beginnings of firing data, and
scouting; with, perhaps, in his off moments, a little of
grooming and horse-shoeing, and the theory, at least, of
equitation.
But he was a little man, and Division Headquarters tore
him from us before we could really annoy him. An order
came down:
Private Frank Dunbaugh is relieved from duty with
the 305th F. A. N. A., and is attached to Division
Headquarters," and so forth.
Paper Work grinned.
For that matter he had plenty to chuckle over already.
Headquarters was aware by now of his portly and
increasing figure. General Orders, Special Orders,
Memoranda, and Bulletins were suspended in neat wads from
the wall. Captain Gammell, the regimental adjutant,
threaded his
way among them with haughty ease. At his suggestion,
indeed, an officer brought from Division Headquarters a
bundle the size of a small bale of cotton. We gathered
around it, admiring the countless neat forms it
contained, all labelled "A. G. 0., No. so and
so."
"What a system!" everybody gasped.
What a system, indeed! But we couldn't dream of all those
delicate forms portended. Captain Gammell distributed
them. Colonel Doyle explained how simple it was to handle
them, and we turned again to the apparently more serious
business of getting ready.
Shorn of their sole enlisted personnel the officers with
grim determination pounced upon each other. There was no
reasonable drill ground, but we took ourselves to the
stumps and the logs of half cleared spaces. We drilled
each other. We shouted at each other. We abused each
other. How, we asked, would new officers and men take
this or that?
"If you make a rookie laugh it's all off," an
officer said after an exceptionally piercing cry of
command.
"Or," another put in dryly, "If you give
him the impression you're going to murder him he won't
respond cheerfully enough."
We endeavored, therefore, not to resemble fools or
assassins. Sometimes it was difficult.
Each day now, for a time, Colonel Doyle rescued us from
our harsh treatment of each other. He took us to the
slope of Division Hill where we sat on charred logs and
listened to him discourse at length on various methods of
computing firing data, or interpret the Articles of War
and Army Regulations, drawing on his long experience in
the Regular Army.
The activity about us was frequently distracting, unreal,
a trifle prophetic. In the rapping of countless hammers
you could fancy the stutter of machine guns. The fall of
heavy timbers was suggestive of the crash of rifles of
our own calibre. At the base of the hill, to give a more
realistic touch of war, lay the encampment of the colored
troops of the 15th New York National Guard.
It should be recalled in passing that these dusky
doughboys were a very small oasis of soldiers in a
thirsty desert of officers. In salutes and courtesies
they received a maximum of practice.
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson came to us during one of these
classes. That was on September 6, and by evening of the
next day the last of the officers sent down from the
First Plattsburg Training Camp had reported and been
assigned or attached to the 305th. Since the majority of
them led the regiment into its first battles a record
should be made of their names in this chapter of
beginnings. We commenced then with the following
officers, most of whom had abandoned civil life only
three months earlier:
Colonel Fred
Charles Doyle, commanding the regiment;
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson, temporarily assigned to the
command of the First Battalion; Major Harry F. Wanvig,
commanding the Second Battalion; Captain Arthur A.
Gammell, regimental adjutant; 2nd Lt. Allen A. Klots,
acting adjutant, First Battalion; Captain Douglas
Delanoy, adjutant Second Battalion; Captain M. G. B.
Whelpley, commanding the Headquarters Company; 1st Lt.
Edward Payne, temporarily in command of the Supply
Company; Captain Alvin Devereux, commanding Battery A;
Captain Gaillard F. Ravenel, commanding Battery B;
Captain Noel B. Fox, commanding Battery C; Captain
Frederick L. Starbuck, commanding Battery D; Captain
Robert T. P. Storer, commanding Battery E; Captain
Cornelius Von E. Mitchell, commanding Battery F; First
Lieutenants Sigourney B. Olney, George P. Montgomery,
William M. Kane, Harvey Pike, Jr., Watson Washburn, James
L. Derby, Edgar W. Savage, Frank Walters, and Drew
McKenna; Second Lieutenants Sheldon E. Road-ley, Thornton
C. Thayer, Norman Thirkield, George B. Brooks, Lydig
Hoyt, Thomas M. Brassel, Lee D. Brown, Chester Burden,
Charles W. Camp, Paul Jones, Oliver A. Church, Roby P.
Littlefield, William H. M. Fenn, John R. Mitchell, Warren
W. Nissley, Harold S. Willis, Frede-rick L. Beek,
Danforth Montague, Melvin E. Sawin, George P. Schutt,
Lloyd Stryker, Lawrence Washington, John A. Thayer,
Karrick M. Castle, Harry G. Hotchkiss, George E. Ogilvie,
William L. Wilcox, Lewis E. Bomeisler, Jr., Darley
Randall, and Edward W. Sage.
Almost at once changes were made in this list of our
charter members, as one might call them. Officers were
assigned away from us, while strangers were brought into
our midst. Thirty-five of the charter members accompanied
the regiment to France. After the armistice there
remained only nineteen.
The eternal changes of the army system were largely
responsible for these losses, as they accounted also
later for the passing of many enlisted men, but whenever
we meet the old friends we think of them as belonging
peculiarly to the 305th. Some we can't see again, because
the Vesle, the Aisne, or the Argonne holds them forever
away.
But it is a dreary business to anticipate. They were very
much with us and very much loved at Upton.
So the first week ended, and we were, speaking sketchily,
on our feet, if still unsteady.
IT HAS GROWING PAINS
GOING into the second week the colonel talked daily with
his organization commanders. Such conferences revolved
largely about the almost scented forms from the Adjutant
General's Office. These, it developed, would, when the
men arrived, have to be decorated with countless, neat
statistics. Soldiers, as far as we knew, might go hungry
or without equipment, but, as far as figures went, they
would unquestionably be cared for tenderly. No one would
have the slightest doubt as to their most intimate family
history, the number of years it had taken them to dribble
through public or private institutions of learning, or
their degree of proficiency on mandolin, harmonica, or
Jew's harp.
The officers at that period filled forms about themselves
in odd moments. The most persistent and suggestive
demanded the name of the relative one wished notified in
case one should become a casualty. Whenever in America or
France things got a little slack a request for that
information would come around. It kept one, as it were,
on one's toes. But we wondered why that bureau never got
fed up with paper work.
Into these daily conferences, almost at once, crept a
sense of imminence. Huge bulletins descended from
Division Hill dealing now in dates. They described with
an admirable detail how the first of the draft men would
be received. To aid us in this task non-commissioned
officers, it was promised, would be sent us from the
Regular Army. They appeared one day-a score or so for our
regiment.
We looked at them. We looked at their service records.
Then we looked at each other. We swallowed our first
lesson in how to send, on order, one's best men to some
other organization. Certainly, in this case, few
commanding officers had parted with their jewels. Some of
these rough diamonds, we suspected from a comparison of
dates, indeed, had been set in chevrons for our needs.
There lay their records of battery punishments and courts
martial. We pitied those distant, unknown commanders. If
these were their best we shrank from picturing their days
and nights with the worst. The audacity of the thing
caught our imagination. There was, we felt, something to
be had from it. They weren't all bad, by any means. Some
became the most useful of soldiers.
Our medical department arrived about the same time, a
worried-looking little group, that trudged through the
dust, dodging piles of lumber. It was led by Lieutenant
James B. Parramore, who later became captain, and for a
time, regimental surgeon. Lieutenant Dennis J. Cronin was
assigned as 1st Battalion Surgeon, and Lieutenant
Marshall A. Moore as 2,nd Battalion Surgeon.
That very day Dr. Parramore constructed a table in
Regimental Headquarters. He placed upon it with proud
gestures a tin of alcohol, a demijohn of castor oil, a
few assorted pills, and gallons, literally, of iodine. He
announced himself open for business.
Business, fortunately, was dull, so the adjutant reached
out for Parramore's enlisted personnel, sat them on a
bench in the hall, and-Behold!-for the first time
Regimental Headquarters had orderlies. There was no doubt
about it. We were growing.
On September 27th the arrival of our chaplain, John J.
Sheridan, was another reminder; and two days later the
long dreamed of moment arrived. Five hundred and
thirty-five recruits were assigned to the regiment.
These men, of course, did not come directly to us from
their local boards. We received them after two weeks'
work of reception and assortment in which all the
officers of the division shared. During that phase the
once strange term "casual" became a by-word.
For all the draft men arrived at Upton as casuals.
Officers met the first train loads at Medford on
September 15th.
There are, let it be granted, few days in the history of
our country more impressive than that one which saw the
triumph of universal service and the birth of our great
national army. But it is rather so from a distance, for
in the minds of the officers and men who assisted there
lingers beyond question, woven with the sublime, a
pal-pable tracery of amazement and mirth.
The draft came in ancient railroad coaches whose sides
were trimmed with placards suggestive of an abnormally
swift and terrible march to Berlin, via Upton; and a
number of penalties for the Kaiser, very ingeniously
thought out.
Then there was the provocative personal adornment. There
had been word in the papers that all civilian clothing
worn to Upton would have to be cast away. So these young
men took no chances. Tattered straw hats were thrust from
the windows; crushed derbies, through which wisps of hair
straggled; top hats, in a few cases, so venerable that it
was a pity to see them out of their sepulchres. And Palm
Beach suits of previous summers were there, and the
dinner jacket, an affair of generations, and the suit
that had been worn on Sundays long before the owner's
maturity. It was an assortment that would have taxed the
sanity of a Hester Street dealer.
You tried to sound the meaning of such a trip to these
Young citizens. You could only sense definitive
separations from home and comfort and affection; a
shrinking from our uniforms, which meant a discipline,
terrifying and undesired; and, perhaps, a perplexed
apprehension, somewhere just ahead, of violence and the
close of experienced things.
No mind, however, could linger on that side. There were
too many races, clamorously asserting themselves. There
had been too much made of a number of departures. There
still lingered too many souvenirs of feasts. Out of the
shadows slipped an eager voice.
"Hay, Tony! Finish off that bottle before these
officer guys can grab it."
And another, less concerned:
" Grabba da hell. My gal, she givva me a charm
against da evil eye of officers."
And some had reached the point where speech ends.
A man in uniform grew disgusted.
"So," he grumbled, "that's what we've got
to teach to fire a three inch gun!"
But we knew he was wrong. He had judged by the high
lights. In the really fundamental background we saw a
sober and determined spirit. We felt even then the
presence of some of the best soldier material in the
world.
After meeting a few of these erratic train loads the
least confident of shavetails could forecast his ordered
garrison tasks with case of mind. For such recruits
weren't simple to control.
When we
gathered at night in J20 the gossip of every group
revolved around the arriving casuals.
"How many souses did you have today, Bill?"
"Two. One wanted to weep on my shoulder, and the
other wanted to give me an uppercut."
"What did you do about it?"
"Ordered the fighting one to take care of the
weeper."
"Say? Did he?"
"You bet. Closed both eyes so the tears couldn't get
out, and satisfied himself at the same time. I remember
he shouted as he swung: 'Hay, Boss! It's a grand
war!"'
Those already in uniform, none the less, felt a quick
sympathy for the newcomers. Their individualities slipped
away from them so easily! At the station they were
labelled and assigned to barracks. They were herded and
marched in long, uncouth lines, to the hospital for
physical examination. We formed squads and tried to
instruct them in the school of the soldier. Rich and
poor, Hebrew and Gentile, short and long, straw-hatted,
felt -hatted, or without any hats at all, they faced us,
eager, one knew, to learn.
" One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
Squad halt. Right face. Left face. About face."
Those that couldn't speak English very well got the
commands confused. Others had a curious lack of balance.
All had a disposition to laugh at mistakes and accidents,
and to discuss and argue about them while in ranks at
attention.
At morning and evening roll-call argument was warmest. No
linguist existed, sufficiently facile to scan that list
intelligibly. Sprinkled among remembered English names
were pitfalls of Italian, Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian,
German, even Chinese.
"Krag-a-co-poul-o-wiez, G."
The officer,
calling the roll, would look up, expecting the response
his triumph deserved. A protest would come, as likely as
not in fluent lower New York accents:
"Do yuh mean me? That ain't the way tuh say my name.
Me own mother wouldn't recernize it."
"Silence! Simply answer, 'here."'
In a tone of deep disgust:
"Then I ain't here. That's all. I ain't here."
An appreciative laugh would ripple down the ranks. Men
learned to be officers and non-commissioned officers in
those days.
Afterwards the
citizen soldiers would get their mess kits, and, sitting
on burned stumps or Thompson-Starret rubbish, would eat a
palatable meal. For the food was coming from somewhere,
and the gear to dispose of it.
We had noticed that Walters, Payne, and Savage were up to
something. During long hours they sat in Regimental
Headquarters studying documents. Then they filled out
many forms, and sample clothing and equipment straggled
into the barracks. This meant a new phase, and now, as we
labelled, we equipped. We became tailors, hatters,
booters. We would begin the night's work by choosing as
comfortable a place as possible in the mess hall with a
pile of pink qualification cards before us. The queue of
awkward and pallid youths would form.
" Name? "
It would flow out in various accents. More frequently
than not it would demand painstaking spelling.
Education, occupation, average wages, capacity for
leadership, ability to entertain, previous military
experience -it all went down. There was one question in
which we took a special interest.
"For what branch of the service do you wish to
express a preference? "
Some had weighed the matter carefully. They believed
themselves born to the Quartermaster's Corps, but the
majority had not foreseen that interrogation, nor, if
they had, it is likely that the meat of their answer
would have had a different texture. Its sincerity was
sometimes naive.
"Oh, hell! I don't care, just so I lick the
Choimans."
We concentrated on the finest. Shamelessly we
prosely-tized, out of this impromptu mission came some of
the regiment's best.
Those hours of dreary, yawning statistics, moreover, had
their relieving moments. Here comes a slender young man
in the familiar suit of remote beginnings. The officer
asks him formally the formal question.
"Wages in your last job?"
"$50,000 a year."
That officer, one recalls, rose to the occasion, for the
young man was not boasting.
"And I understand you wish to express a preference
for the Field Artillery?"
Wasn't it Hoadley who faced a youth just the reverse of
this last-that is, flashily tailored?
"What can you furnish in the way of
entertainment?"
"Me?" the flashy young man replied. "I
could steer the village miser into a poker game, and,
believe me, bo, I can make a deck of cards lay down and
roll over. What's the idea? What d'ye mean? I got to
split with you? "
When he declared for the Cooks and Bakers his choice went
down without argument.
Afterwards we
would line our charges up again and desert qualification
cards for sample shoes and hats and clothing. Sizes were
limited, and we hadn't suspected before nature's infinite
variety in modeling the human form. We made an axiom at
the start. The more peculiar the shape, the more
particular the owner.
"For the
lova Mike, mister, I can't wear that coat. Makes me look
as if I'd broke me breast bone."
Or:
"You got to melt me to get me into this."
Everybody worked with patience and a desire to be fair,
but, just the same, you had to make both ends meet and as
the hours flew by you may have hurried a little.
It was during these sessions that a rotund and good-
natured officer gave us a stirring example and prophesied
his own future.
"You're in
luck. That's a wonderful fit," you'd hear him say to
a man with a 39, chest lost in a 36 blouse. "You're
a perfect 36. Might have been cut for you."
The man would gather a fistful of the excess cloth,
stretching it towards the officer.
"Cut for an elephant."
"The tailor will alter it so it won't look like the
same blouse."
"I'm not saying anything about its looks. All I'm
saying is maybe it isn't quite big enough for a
good-sized elephant."
The officer's buttons would stretch.
" If you want to get along in the army, young man,
you'll do as you're told. I wouldn't mind wearing that
blouse myself."
"But," an officer would whisper to him.
"You're not quite as big as a good-sized
elephant."
The officer would grin and continue to show us how to
make the best of the material in hand.
"That hat isn't too big for you," he would call
out in his cheery voice. "Gives your hair a chance
to grow."
So we struggled on through the days and nights until the
first quota was classified and at least partially
equipped. And out of that quota came for us, as related,
five hundred and thirty-five recruits-not far from half a
regiment.
"The men we're to live and fight and die with,"
someone said.
It wasn't to turn out quite like that. We didn't foresee
the wholesale transfers, the all-night conferences when
officers and non-coms tried to do the fair thing without
destroying their organizations. Still those dark days of
transfers fall more reasonably in another chapter. For
the present we were a trifle hypnotized by our growth and
our power. We looked along the lines, guessing at the
good and the bad for, like all regiments, we had both.
The faces we saw were pretty white, and the frames not,
as a rule, powerful. For we were a part of the
Metropolitan Division. Most of our men came from the
crowded places of New York. Out of city dwellings,
offices, subways, and sweatshops they poured into the
wind-swept reaches of Upton. They knew none of the tricks
a boy picks up in the country that fits him, after a
fashion, for such fighting as we were destined for in the
Vosges, on the Vesle and Aisne, in the Argonne, and on
the Meuse.
"Will soldiers grow from such material?"
visitors asked.
From the start officers and men knew the answer as
affirmative. Day by day beneath the bland autumn sun
faces bronzed, chests seemed to expand and shoulders to
broaden before the tonic of physical labor. For it wasn't
all drill. The miracles continued, but there weren't
enough ci-vilian workmen available to construct the city,
to clear vast spaces for drilling, and to arrange
artillery and small-arms ranges. So orders came for the
draft men to pitch in and help. Thus commenced the
cheerful game of stump pulling.
Of our original quota there are very few that couldn't
qualify as expert destroyers of wildernesses. The famous
skinned diamond exists as a monument to our skill. The
target range is a document written in the passionate
sweat of our brows.
During this education the first effects of discipline
were apparent. Faces might darken with rage or whiten
from weariness, but in the realized presence of a
superior work went on without too painful comment.
Occasionally, if hidden through chance by a screen of
bushes, you might hear burning opinions of army life in
general and stump snatching in particular. At school we
had been taught that the average man's vocabulary is
scarcely more than five hundred words. The understatement
is obvious. Any soldier of the 305th who couldn't apply
as many adjectives as that to the common noun "
stump " was frowned upon as mentally deficient or as
one affecting an ultra religious pose.
Such tasks were, in a sense, a digging of a pitfall for
one's own feet. As the skinned diamond expanded our
drills waxed proportionately ambitious. But the entire
process was performing another miracle. Where formerly
had slouched slovenly ranks appeared now straight lines
of soldierly figures, heads up and shoulders squared,
exuding a joy in things military.
"What's all this guff about West Point?" you'd
hear. "Watch my outfit drill any day."
And the
veterans of a week or so exposed a most amusing tolerance
for newer recruits. The difference between a uniform and
civilian clothing created an extensive gulf. In a few
days it would be bridged. The awkward squad of the day
before would face the awkward squad of today with
expressions of veteran contempt. For the recruits poured
in during October. On the first we received one hundred
and thirteen, on the ninth one hundred and eighty-three,
on the tenth two hundred and fifty-four, on the twelfth,
two hundred and eight. So that by the end of that month
we had forty-one officers assigned, eighteen attached,
and one thousand three hundred and thirteen enlisted men.
The 305th was a regiment. All we needed were horses and
guns to realize that we were, indeed, artil-lery,
designed to throw projectiles at the Huns.
To give variety to our stump-pulling sport Colonel Doyle
called our attention to certain long, low and harmless
-appearing buildings across Fifth Avenue. Still living in
the J section, remote from these constructions - the men
hadn't suspected in them any further spur to their
vocabularies. Now, it seemed, they were to be our
stables. The civilian workmen's responsibility had ceased
when they had put up sides and roofs. The rest we must
do. We had many fences to build around them, and more
land to clear for riding rings and paddocks. We were
encouraged to enormous efforts on October 18th when the
government presented us with eight mules. They were led
to the most comfortable stable. They were treated as
honored guests.
Quite fittingly, our first veterinarian, Lieutenant
North, arrived soon after.
The problem of our missing field officer was solved on
October 14th when Major Thomas J. Johnson reported. No
one had an opportunity just then to know him very well or
to judge him competently. It wasn't until we had reached
France that we were to realize our good fortune. For on
October 26th he was detailed to the School of Fire at
Fort Sill. Major Wanvig left for the same destination on
November 7th.
Without formal battalion commanders the work of the
regiment continued, in view of the lack of equipment,
amazingly well. Reserve officers of only a few months
training displayed exceptional qualities of leadership.
New soldiers wanted to learn. An artilleryman must be
able to do more than use a sight, work a breach, or pull
the lanyard. The chances of the draft had given the 305th
a number of highly-educated specialists for the more
complicated work of conduct of fire, and the delicate
details of scouting and communication. To that important
extent the regiment was already better off than some of
the older organizations. By day the officers instructed
and drilled the men, and by night the officers went to
school themselves to Colonel Doyle and Lieutenant Colonel
Stimson, who did the best they could with the slight
material at hand to keep us abreast of artillery
developments in the war zone. When finally we got to
France we were over-whelmed to realize all we had to
learn.
When now we glanced from the slope of Division Hill at
the bleak landscape which only a few weeks before had
aroused our skepticism we saw barracks, quarters, and
department buildings rising from the ashes of the forest.
Piecemeal, during October, the regiment moved from the J
section to its own area. The change was complete on
October 24th. As we had policed J and its vicinity so we
made our surroundings in M neat and military.
Officers and men received a fortunate impression of
permanence. As long as we remained in Upton we would have
our own home. Things, we felt in our ignorance, were
going well. Even a band had been collected, and could
play one or two pieces in public with comparative safety.
During the latter part of October and the first part of
November the officers were brought a little closer to
their mission. They were conducted by twos and threes to
Sandy Hook to watch the practical working of projectiles
and fuses; and forty attended a six-day artillery course
in New Haven under the experienced instruction of Captain
Dupont, of the French Army, and Captains Bland and
Massey, of the Canadian artillery.
It was on these trips that most of the officers saw for
the first time the famous soixaute-quinze. They admired
it as a piece of artillery perfection without being able
to guess that it would be their companion for many
months, a thing nearly as animate as the men who served
it.
What we actually got at Upton at this time was a single
battery of venerable three-inch guns, relics of the 51st
Field Artillery Brigade, New England National Guard.
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson snared this for us, together
with much other useful equipment which aroused the envy
of less fortunate organizations who didn't have a former
secretary of war. Certainly one battery among six was
better than none.
When the guns arrived on November 10th the regiment
gathered around them, patted them fondly, examined their
mechanism, peered down their throats.
Pride leaped.
"God help Jerry when we show him these!'
But Jerry never saw them. Perhaps one day in the dust of
some ordnance museum they may be observed by all the
world-precious relics of the extended battle of the 305th
at Camp Upton.